


Staring at the Sun

by omphalos



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hallucinations, Mindfuck, disturbing imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-06
Updated: 2009-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-04 05:17:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphalos/pseuds/omphalos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lorne is visited by a nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Staring at the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> This is set just after Fredless in s3 of Angel, but it refers to the events to come in s4.

"...the party's over; it's time to call it a day. They've burst your pretty balloon and taken the moon away. It's time to wind up the masquerade." Lorne held tight to his one surviving martini glass as he sung loidly to himself, perusing the wreck of the good ship Caritas.

He'd fallen into the habit of doing this a lot lately. He was wallowing in his ruined dreams as if they were a cheap and sickly sweet dessert. It would make him nauseous in the short term and ugly in the long term, but he just couldn't stop digging in that spoon.

He had a right to this, a right to dressing gowns and slippers and daytime TV, and all the other tricks of the depression trade. He'd only just had the place refurbished after the damage caused by the Incredible World-hopping Angelmobile, and boy, hadn't that been a hoot and a half to get out of this _basement_ bar? Then smash, whoosh, in had come Gunn and the two-wrongs-don't-make-a-happy-clientele gang.

And afterwards? The danger averted, super-vamp and super-sidekicks had skidooed out of the picture, leaving Lorne with a headache the size of his ruined bar and all the vodka bottles smashed so he couldn't even make a seabreeze to soothe his perforated nerves. Where was the love? Hadn't he given ceaselessly to them? But, of course, the only time he'd seen any of them since had been when they'd lost Fred.

He was drinking neat Bacardi 151 currently, wincing with every sip. That's all the gunfight had left him; well, that and some Brogdon Slime, and he was _not_ drinking that. He was exaggerating, of course; there were plenty of undamaged bottles in the stockroom. But something stubborn and lugubrious inside him wouldn't allow that door to be opened. Not yet. He'd got a flagon of self-pity to sup on first, Mixed with a shot of the hard-done-by bitters and a twist of righteous sour, it was almost palatable.

"Now," he sang, "you must wake up; all dreams must end. Take off your make-up; the party's over. It's over, my friend." He held the last note, considered taking it high enough to smash whatever glass remained, but then he heard an impossible noise.

His door -- his _locked_ front door to the bar -- opened, and a voice could be heard drifting down the stairs. "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Poor little Greenie had a great fall."

The voice, female and strangely accented, almost Hepburn as the divine Eliza Doo., was accompanied by the slow click of heels on the stairs coming down from outside. There's enough of a lilt to the voice, enough of the sing-song, for Lorne to read the woman in black lace and crushed red velvet as she steps into his bar-that-was.

Woman? Vampire -- old, powerful, and as crazy as Jacko on a sugar spree. Lorne knew just who this was. He'd heard enough about Drusilla, seen her in the sung confessions of Angel, Darla and others. He now saw flashes of her laughing, dancing amongst entrails strewn like fallen party streamers, the heels of her granny boots slipping in the offal... He saw her crying and ruined, her bodice torn, her eyes empty... saw her knelt and praying... and saw her prey. Which would be him currently.

Caritas was no longer a sanctuary. Demon could now damage demon, could kill demon, could horribly torture demon with... oh no. Could you really do _that_ with one of _those_? Lorne's one remaining martini glass shattered on the floor as he backed away from his unexpected guest, his head full of flesh that was torn like...

"Like petticoats," Drusilla said, stalking towards him. She was carrying a hefty canvas bag with an embroidered sunflower design. "Like battlements breached. Didn't like shut doors, did he? Like a cat all locked in."

"Wh... what can I do for you, uh, sweetie?" Lorne asked, because she's sugar and spice and all things not so nice, this one. Sweet as embalming fluid.

"Little twinklin' star told me to come and see you," she said, stopping a foot or so away from him and letting her bag fall with a clank. "Greenie will know, it said. Greenie'll tell you."

"Ah, well, there, you see. You have the wrong guy." He held his hand out as if to shake hers. "Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan. Nice to meet you. Greenie's two doors down. Easy mistake to make. I'll just show you out."

She took his hand, lifted it to her mouth and licked it. "Green," she said insistently. "Malachite and chartreuse and the eyes of the little girl I played with last night."

"Yes, they're all green things," he agreed as if talking to the little girl whose fate he doesn't want to consider. "But they're not me. Like Greenie isn't me."

Her painted lips pouted, her eyes widening and looking moist. For a moment, maybe two, Lorne saw the hurt child and not the demon, and he was weak enough to say, "Tell you what, princess..." He sighed and righted a chair, hurriedly kicking away the rubble from under the feet. "Let's sit and talk. You can tell me all about what you want this 'Greenie' for, and maybe I can help instead."

Her face brightened, the full moon emerging through a veil of cloud. "We could have tea and crumpets. Do you like crumpets? My auntie used to give me toasted crumpets with butter and strawberry jam. They frightened me."

"Yes, very scary things, crumpets. By far the most sinister of all baked goods." Lorne waved at imaginary dust on the seat of the chair, trying to persuade her to sit.

"Lots of holes in crumpets, see? Like the moon. I looked into the holes, and do you know what I saw?"

"Uh, not melted butter I take it?"

"No!" she scolded. "No, no, no." She dragged a claw lightly over his cheek from eye to jawbone. "I saw my auntie's blood."

"Are you sure now it wasn't just the strawberry jam?" He moved his face as far away from the talons as he dared. There was too much rubble to shuffle back further without looking around.

She tutted and waggled her finger in front of his face. "Bad Greenie, making fun of Auntie. Someone needs a spanking."

"Not me, I hope. That's a bit too much like defibrillation for my kind."

The pointing finger pulled down the left side of his chest like a dissecting scalpel. She didn't try to cut through his lilac pyjama top, but he could feel its wake as a burning line on his skin all the same. The hand moved around to behind him, and she stepped closer as she fondled his ass.

"Ouch," he said as her nails dug in a little. "No offence, dear, but you're really not my type." He stepped to the side, but she followed, turning him, steering him.

"One for sorrow." She smacked his butt lightly. "Two for pain." And again. "Are you going to be a good Greenie?"

This time it had been a gentle spanking, the next could be a disembowelling. He knew what to say, and he said it fast. "Yes, absolutely. One good Greenie coming right up."

Her hand rose then descended upon his shoulder with the weight of a lodestone, pushing him inexorably into the chair that was now behind his legs. "He ate her," she said as if it was relevant. "All quick like. Wasn't bad for her. Not like what he did to my mum. Do you want to see?"

"Oh no, I really don't. My imagination is good. I–"

She took no notice, of course, and started to sing. "As I was a-walking one morning in spring, I heard a pretty plough boy, so sweetly he did sing. And as he was a-crooning, oh these words I heard him say -- there's no life like the plough boy's in the sweet month of May..."

It wasn't as if Lorne didn't know what Angel was. But knowing about the rape, torture and brutality was really not at all the same as seeing it. Feeling it. "Enough, Lucretia, enough!" he complained, shying away, his horror and anger making him braver. "Doesn't that come with a volume control?"

"Don't you want to know?" she asked, pouting again. "I thought you liked Daddy, thought you were his greenie-friend."

"Hey!" He was stung. "My Angel's the all-new improved recipe with the side order of soul. The Zeus to your Leda is no pal of mine."

"Oh," she said, taken by something. She wrapped her arms around herself and swayed. "Long quills stained with scarlet ink. Pretty. I like you, Greenie." She wandered off further into the bar, away from him.

"That's nice. I like to be liked." Moving very quietly, he stood up. "It's... nice." He took a couple of steps toward the door.

"Three for the godhead and four for the reign," she sing-songed from somewhere behind him. "Bad Greenie. Did you ask teacher if you could be excused?"

He froze on the spot until a loud crashing noise made him whirl around. She'd ripped the bead curtain from the archway and was now prowling back to him, trailing beads like fallen stars. "Please, miss, may I be excused?" he asked weakly. Well, it was worth a try.

"No, you may not. 'Cause bad boys get no toffee apples."

"Can't I be a good boy instead?"

"Good boys keep their promises. Good boys don't leave the dying Jew on the road for the crows to peck and peck and peck and..." She punctuated her words with beak like gestures of her hands as she got close. "Good boys listen when they're spoken to and don't answer back."

Did that mean he should keep quiet? He decided to try it and offered her a silently obliging smile. She stamped her foot and glareed towards his vacated chair. Hurriedly, he sat down again, only to feel his heart jump in butt-clenching fear when she hoisted her skirts up and straddled him. She didn't weigh much. No fat on this one, much like Fred. Birdlike, they both were. Only this bird's had talons and a taste for blood.

"Mmm," she purred. "I like green." She opened his pyjama top one slow button at a time. "Green like the new leaves of spring. Will you go golden when you die?"

Tentatively, he put his hands on her upper arms. "Drusilla, sweetie, if you concentrate real hard, maybe you can tell me what you want? I can't help unless I know."

Her hands stilled, and she closed her eyes. "Hush, hush, whisper who dares. Grandma is crying under the stairs. I've been dreaming, Greenie. Little stars come down from the sky, go bad behind my eyes."

"And you want me to tell you what the dreams mean?"

Things happened fast then. She was off him and twisting his arms behind his back before he'd even registered that the weight had gone from his legs. The chains of beads rattled like bullets from an automatic as she wrapped them around the tubular steel chair frame. They pressed hard into his flesh as she bound him, wrists and ankles, thighs and chest, cocooning him in crazy webbing.

He didn't protest; he couldn't. Because she hummed while she worked, and he was more trapped in the screams of a thousand lost souls than he was the beaded string. They stayed with him while she was gone, though he still heard the crashes and thuds while she explored his building. Then she was back, a bottle of the chateau le plonk in her hand.

"Oh doll. We have much nicer tipples than that. If you'd just let me up..." He strained against the bonds more for form's sake than in any belief that he could break them.

"Shh," she hissed. "This is the right one. See?" She showed him the label close up. "It's got flowers in it."

"That's just the design of the la–" He stopped when he saw her face. "Yes, flowers. It's wine made from flowers. Of course it is."

"Got to be flowers. For _her_."

"Who's 'her'?" he asked since he suspected it was expected of him, though with Drusilla such things were hard to tell.

"End of the line." She dragged a claw down his exposed chest, cutting this time. Blood welled up like a string of the beads that bound him. "Train terminates here. Mind the gap." She giggled and drew her finger to her mouth, tasting him.

He whimpered. He wasn't a champion; not a brave man. Peace and some rather splendid harmonies were all he'd ever desired.

"Pepper and mustard and horse radish -- that's you, Greenie," she told him and picked up the bag she'd dropped earlier. She drew out something wrapped in fraying raw silk. Pushing the cloth back, she revealed a chipped beaker that looked at first glance as if it were cut from a hunk of turquoise. But when Lorne saw the hieroglyphics on the side, and the sickening horror of recognition filled him, he knew it wasn't carved rock that he was looking at.

"How... why... How in the name of Lovecraft did you get your deadly hands on that? Oh God, don't drop it!"

She rubbed the cup against her face and almost purred. "A nice man gave it me."

Lorne shook his head slightly, for the first time wondering if this was all a dream. "The last I heard of Sekhmet's Goblet, it was languishing safely in the collection of a certain powerful sorcerer. Who, while he might be a smidgen on the amoral side and have a terribly unfortunate fondness for Cher, certainly doesn't lack in smarts."

"I bit him. Tasted like old paper bags, he did."

"And he _let_ you?"

"Wanted to live forever. Got plans, that one. Wants to dance when the world ends. I promised him a waltz. Should I wear white?"

"Why not? It will match the bone motif." Lorne rolled his eyes. "For someone as awash with power as that guy, there's gotta be a better way to live forever. Why the Sam Hill would he want to be sired?"

Levering up the horror quotient still further, Drusilla sung, her voice that of a doll in a Halloween nursery. "When the baby spider wants to trap a fly, often time the silken thread will come awry. Although a tangled web is all that he can claim, it's a step in the right direction all the same."

Lorne reeled in the chair, images of the sorcerer's 'plans' rough-dancing with the man's siring in his head. He sawe Drusilla's centuries of slaughter all mixed up with Lorne's own future with the Sekhmet Cup. Oh, if there was ever a thing not to give to a blood-hungry, insane she-demon, it had to be this.

Sekhmet, the lion-headed sun goddess, whose unquenchable thirst for gore and violence had even frightened the other gods of the Egyptian pantheon, hardly a peaceable lot in themselves. Her goblet, made of a material called faience, was the one she was said to have drunk from when the rest of the gods had resorted to drink-spiking to slow her down. As a symbol of their betrayal, she'd cursed the cup so that those who drank from it henceforth would know the truth of what beset them.

And speaking as someone whose destiny, it seemed, was to untangle small glimpses of the truth from the webbed veil that protects all the poor souls who must live in reality, Lorne knew full well that pure, distilled, raw truth was as deadly as neat alcohol. Too much of a good thing. Far, far too much.

It was like staring at the sun or walking into the flames. Mortal souls couldn't do these things and stay whole.

Lorne wished he knew substantially less about ancient Egyptian myth and lore. Unfortunately, it was a pet subject of his, and had been since he'd considered making Caritas a temple to Bast, Sekhmet's kinder sister.

"Please, no. No, Drusilla. It will destroy us both. Just sing to me, dear. Sing to me about your dreams, and I'll read you. We don't need to do the bad drinking; we really don't." He was begging, but he might as well have been reciting the scripts for the lost season of Dallas for all the notice she took.

She broke the stem from the bottle with a snap of green glass and filled the goblet with the cheap wine. Lorne promised himself that he wouldn't drink it, that torture or death was preferable, but he knew really that he wasn't that strong. She crooned softly, every note a grain of salt in the open wound she'd already made of him, even before the lioness could burn out his eyes.

He knew better than to hope for rescue. He wasn't important, just useful. They'd only notice he was gone when they needed him again. For all his play at bitter and twisted, he didn't really begrudge them this. Theirs was a greater destiny, one of the Powers' making, and he was just a messenger boy. Though he could've done without being shot at. _That_ he did begrudge them. A little bit.

And now this. Angel's little girl was playing with knives and matches. And somehow, he already knew that Sekhmet's Truth would be all about Daddy Dearest because everything always was, always had been, since the day that nice English boy had first come into Caritas and hummed along to Kirak the toad-demon's rather dainty rendition of 'Send in the Clowns'.

Don't bother, they're here.

"My brother is crying," she told him, her eyes impossibly huge. "Can you hear him?"

"You have a brother?" Lorne wondered how long he could delay the inevitable with conversation. Not long it seemed. She straddled him again, wine splashing out of the cup and staining the white towelling of his robe. Even her slight weight pressed the beads around his legs further into his flesh and upped the pain ante. Like he needed anymore with what he'd got to come. He groaned.

Her talon rested on his lips. "Hush now. Strong-willed he'll be, named for it. One of a kind; the Captain's boy." Her hand lifted a little, her long fingers dancing in front of his eyes. He found he was tracking them, despite knowing perfectly well what she was up to. It would, he guessed, be easier to have no will of his own in this. "Drink now, Greenie," she said. "Drink and dream with me."

And so he did.

***

There's a strong scent in the black, sweet and cloying like something he knows, or has known, but can't quite recognise now.

Somewhere in the dark, a little girl is chanting. "Run, run, as fast as you can..." Lorne stands, lost, seeing nothing, and wonders if he should head towards the chant, his one anchor in this nothingness, or take its advice.

But then light comes hurtling towards him like a silent express train, sweeping over him and taking his breath with it. And he's out of the cold and into... the alley outside the back of Caritas?

It's snowing in LA. It's so hot and close it feels like a tropical greenhouse, but it's snowing. As Lorne mops his brow with his terrycloth sleeve, he looks up. The snowflakes on his cheeks feel gentle and warm. They are flowers, tiny white flowers, falling from the sky, blanketing LA in their delicate softness.

They collect around his feet, and he feels unwilling to move in case he damages their star-like perfection.

"It's all you need," says a young male voice.

Lorne looks up to see a human boy, late teenage, with an elfin face that reminds him of someone and dark, dangerous eyes that speak of someone else entirely. "Do _you_ need it?" he asks the boy; he's not sure why.

The kid scowls. "It's a lie," he says. Suddenly he turns and runs, impossibly fast. He's gone from the alley before Lorne has taken a breath.

"Run, run, as fast as you can..." echoes the little girl's voice. But Lorne lets the boy go; he doesn't want to tread on the flowers. But when he looks down at them again, he's standing in sand so pale it's almost white. And while he's still absorbing this, the roar of the LA traffic becomes waves rolling in to shore.

Looking around, he's on a tropical beach, complete with palm trees and beating sun on his back. And it's only then that it hits him that he's dreaming. Or hallucinating, anyway, within Sekhmet's curse. "Drusilla?" he calls hesitantly.

"No, she's just the mirror for this little jaunt into Wonderland, Alice." A female voice, and one he knows; one he's heard sing. She emerges from the air in front of him like a heat haze taking form. Lilah Morgan.

Gone is the designer lawyer garb; here she wears -- suitably, Lorne guesses -- the robes of ancient Egypt. A long white skirt starts under naked breasts which Lorne wishes he was of more of a mindset to appreciate. A headdress crowns Lilah's loose hair -- stylised bull's horns holding the sphere of the moon.

"Where's this place supposed to be?" he asks, thinking he'd give just about anything for a full cocktail glass just about now.

Her lips twist in amusement. "It's my little getaway hideyhole. I come here when I need a break from the... office."

Lorne is knocked back a step or so by a blip-vision -- there and then gone. Lilah, naked and wild, straddling an angel on the sand of this beach, the sea suddenly scarlet. Pink frothed waves crash about them. The angel's wings are broken and twisted, and when he looks toward Lorne, his mouth open in a silent scream, Lorne feels like he's falling.

"Whoa," he says, stumbling a little as he tries to regain his balance. "What in the name of overkill was that?"

"What was what?" Lilah asks and then smiles, inscrutably smug. "We don't have forever, Greenie. You need to make your questions count."

"Why does everyone keep calling me that?" Lorne asks, pained. "And no, that wasn't one of my 'questions'." He thinks about what he's doing here. "I need to know about Drusilla's dreams."

There's a book in Lilah's hands now, old and leather bound, embossed with the words 'The Greater Law'. She cracks it open. "Let's see now. Yes, I thought so. That question is forbidden; Drusilla's fate is her own."

Lorne is feeling a little cross now. "Okay, Babylon. Since when did you care about obeying the rules? I thought you guys were all about making the Law dance on your own strings."

"We _are_ the Law, sweetie, and the countdown is, well, counting down."

There's another fractured moment of rough ride by the scarlet sea. The broken angel lifts a hand from the waves to beseech Lorne, and the water drips like thick theatrical blood from his palm. Lorne feels a sharp blow on the back of his head and drops to his knees as the image jerks back to Lilah and her book.

Lorne has a talent for surrender. "Can you tell me what I should ask?"

"Ah, now that didn't take so long. I'm impressed. Many waste their entire time here, demanding and ranting, and never reach that point." She throws the book at him, but when it lands in the sand by his knees and falls open, it's suddenly a pomegranate, broken in two.

Lorne picks up one half and looks at it dubiously. "Playing Eve, hon?"

She laughs. "Hardly. I'm much more interesting than her." Grinning, Lilah makes a deliberate hissing noise through her teeth. "Eat up if you want answers."

Tentatively, Lorne lifts a few of the blood red seeds to his lips and sucks on them. There's a clanging noise like a gate slamming and everything whirls until he's staggering on the gravel pathways of what seem to be formal gardens.

Neatly trimmed miniature trees like cotton balls on sticks dot the path at regular intervals, and high, well-manicured hedges border both sides. The sun is bright and low in the sky, shining straight at him so he has to shield his eyes to see.

There's a woman picking round fruit from one of the globular trees. Her silhouette is as rounded as the fruit itself, her belly swollen in obvious pregnancy, which not even what looks like some kind of ball gown can disguise. Huge hair crowns her head in a style that makes Lorne think of Marie Antoinette.

As he watches, moving slowly closer, she seems to prick herself on a thorn, withdrawing her hand hurriedly and sucking on the thumb. "Careful, honey," he warns. "You don't wanna sleep for a century."

"Only women bleed," replies the woman. It's not Lilah; that's for sure.

As Lorne gets closer, he can see her more clearly, and it's easy enough to match the voice to the half-shadowed face. "Cordy? My God, are you...?"

"No, dimwit, I just ate one too many Hershey's kisses. Of course, I'm pregnant!" Well, she may be dressed as 17th century French aristocracy, but the words and tone are all SoCal beauty queen.

"So.... who's the father?"

"The father is the son," she replies and rolls her eyes. "Call that a line? Who writes this crap? Jeez, the stuff I have to work with here."

Lorne grimaces. "How's a guy meant to make sense out of this?"

She slips her arm through his. "Come on, you big lug, let me take you somewhere it might seem a little clearer."

The gravel crunches like the bones of dead children under his feet, and by that analogy at least, he knows that Drusilla is still with him somewhere in all of this. There's another noise too, a scraping sound coming from behind them. He looks back over his shoulder to see that Cordelia is dragging two large blocks of wood along by strings that are attached to parts of her bodice.

They reach a four-way junction containing a large basin fountain. The elaborate sculpture in the centre of the pool is of a man in a short tunic lounging around on a grapes-covered dais with some drunken cherubs. At least, Lorne hopes they're cherubs, as otherwise...

"Hey, check out the kiddie perv!" Cordy exclaims, walking up to the basin and perching on the edge. "What, are they having a grape eating competition or something?"

"I thought you were the one with the answers, moppet." Lorne sits down beside her.

"I _am_. I'm just, you know, adding a little humour? God knows, we need it. But you want answers? I've got 'em. Answers coming right up." She pauses, staring thoughtfully at him.

"What?"

"I'm trying to decide whether to sing 'Papa Don't Preach' or 'Like a Virgin'."

Trying not to shudder, Lorne advises, "If you're going for Madonna, Material Girl's a better look for you."

She glances down at herself then waves a hand dismissively. "What? You never heard of the virgin birth?"

Rolling his eyes, Lorne perseveres. "Hokay, Mary, queen of heaven, howsabout those answers?"

"Well... it all started on my birthday when I fell down and couldn't get up. No, that's not right. It started when Doyle died." She pauses, biting the tip of her finger. "Hmm, well, actually I think it started with Angel and Buffy falling head over their IQ's in love. No, I got it! It started when the gypsies cursed Angel. Yeah, that's it. There was nothing special about the big dork before then."

"Okay, right. So this _is_ all about Angel, like I didn't know. Keep talking."

"Well, Angel lies -- he keeps doing that -- Darla has a boy, Wesley goes into the kidnapping business and gets his throat cut and then Angel tries to kill him. Then I ascend, and Angel's sunk."

She drops a pebble into the water and the splash hits Lorne's hand. He raises it to his mouth, absently sucking the water off.

Cordy continues, "Wes rescues Angel, I descend again in that terrible dress. I mean, what was I thinking? Then the Beast shows up, and it rains fire -- um, the sky. Not the Beast. Though come to think of it, the whole fire thing was his trick, so that too. Anyway, yadda yadda, and you know? I gotta say the whole birthing experience was a downer for me. I'm so not the natural mother type. I mean, the clothes!"

Without the flashes of visions that had accompanied her words, Lorne doubts he would have had the slightest idea what it all meant. But there'd been sickening blips of squalling infants, a blacked out sun, violence between friends, so much blood, so many dead lawyers, and hundreds of thousands of smiling happy people lining up to be eaten alive by a... thing with far too many mouths. He's got a feeling if he can just put the jigsaw together, there's gonna be one hell of a completed picture.

'Hell' being the important word there.

Trouble is, the soundbites came with a throbbing headache. He feels like he's been hit over the head with something hard and heavy, or had a hole drilled into his skull or something. It makes puzzling this all out a torment. So much for the searing truth of Sekhmet's curse. So far it's been standard ambiguous subconscious allegory all the way.

"So," Cordy starts again, getting back on track, "the point is, someone has to stop it."

"Don't look at me," Lorne says, rubbing between his horns. "I'd have to recognise it to stop it. This is Drusilla's dream, anyway."

"Hey," says a voice from the other side of him; he knows who it is without looking, but turns anyway. Lilah, now dressed for the office, passes him a cocktail glass containing a thick dark red drink. "Only _your_ fate, remember?"

"Listen, Scarlet. A. you never said that, and, b. I've already been given glimpses into many foul fates thankfully not mine." He sips at the drink, more grateful than he can say for the chance at alcohol. He tastes grenadine, cream and maybe sloe gin, he's not sure about the rest. It's strong though; glory be. He empties the glass with one swallow and puts it down on the ledge they're sitting on. His headache starts to fade.

Lilah laughs. "You should be a lawyer; you've got the horns for it." She sits down beside him.

Cordy stirs, and Lorne looks back at her as she says, "He's gonna need that," to Lilah.

He glances back to Lilah only to see her calmly pulling a jagged blade from a bloody hole in her neck. Reality can return anytime now, whenever it wants to. _Now_ would be a good choice. "That's gotta hurt."

She smiles at him. "Only for a few seconds." She hands him the knife by the handle. "So how are you on the abortion issue?"

He stares down at the blade in horrified fascination, turning it in his hands. Her blood drips down onto his fingers "Uh, I'm generally a pro-life kind of guy in every sense."

"Big softie, that's what you are." Cordelia cuddles up to him. "You're gonna have to be so strong, baby."

She lifts his unresisting hand and draws the knifepoint in a circle over the cloth of her belly; it leaves a rust red line on the satin. Cordy gives the circle a cross beneath it -- the symbol of Venus.

Her eyes meet his. "It's crappy work, Lorne, but somebody's gotta do it, or else we'll all be munching on flowers." There's a ripple on the water in the fountain pool; suddenly it's covered in perfect white water lilies. "Until the flowers munch on us."

Lorne gives them only the briefest glance, his growing horror dragging his eyes back to the blade. It might as well be a bent wire coat hanger, he thinks. "I can't kill your baby, Cordelia. I'm not the Herod type."

"That one's your second chance," Lilah tells him sternly. "Try not to let it get that far."

Lorne feels sick. "I can't..."

"You know," Cordelia starts. "The fountain perv over there; he's got the right idea."

"He has?" Lorne wonders if he should be feeling even sicker.

"Yeah. 'Cause he's Autumn, you see." Cordy trickles her hands through the water, which seems to have taken on a purple colour.

"Well, technically," Lilah puts in behind Lorne, "he's just representing the fall."

Cordy rolls her eyes. "Whatever. See, the thing is, summer can't last forever. Someone bites an apple or sucks on a handful of seeds or opens a box, and bang, that's it, Eden's gates are closed, and the stores are doing their Back-to-School sales. And that's the way it should be. Unless you losers wanna be little kids forever."

"Free will comes with a hefty price, champ," Lilah says quietly. "Paradise lost. Can you pay the toll, Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan?"

"Why me?" he moans. "You want a baby-killer? You've got Drusilla. She's an expert."

"She's your knife," Lilah agrees easily. She traces a finger up the blade, her blood upon it increasingly sticky. It twitches in his hands. "But you'll have to wield her."

"Wind the psycho up and let her go," Cordy agrees.

"Oh God." He can't do that. "What's so great about free will anyhow?"

Both women laugh, and Lilah says wryly, "Says the little boy demon who left not only his family but his entire world in order to be able to be himself."

Acting in scary synchronicity, the two women twist on the ledge to face each other across Lorne. They put a hand on each of his legs. He wonders if screaming and running away is possible in a vision realm.

"Kill a brat that's not even born, or doom the whole damn world," Lilah says.

"Kinda easy when you look at it that way, huh?" Cordy completes.

He tries tapping his furry slipper-clad heels together. "There's no place like home," he says weakly.

Cordelia digs her nails into his leg. "Home won't be any place you'll wanna be in unless you do this, you big green wimp."

With her free hand, Lilah dips the emptied cocktail glass into the stained water of the fountain and offers it to him. "It's all about interdependent opposites," she says, "Light and shadow, good and evil, law and chaos..."

"Sonny and Cher," he interjects, taking the glass. It smells of port.

Cordelia laughs and continues Lilah's list, "Life and death, male and female... the point is, maestro, neither can exist without the other; not in this dimension. Not without messing up big time, anyway."

"Too right," Lorne agrees, who definitely doesn't believe in life after love. He swallows the drink down, barely even tasting it. Perhaps if he drinks the whole fountain pool he'll be drunk enough to... wield the revolving sword that is Drusilla.

"All things have to end," Cordelia tells him. She gestures at Lilah. "It says so in her big book. If _all_ you have is happiness, then you don't have anything, song boy."

"Because you need the shadows to see the light," Lorne agrees miserably. "Gotcha. Very Italian Renaissance of you, I gotta say."

"Have another drink," Lilah encourages in a kindly tone. "You're a musician. You know there's no music if it's all in one note. We don't have to tell you that."

He dips the glass back in and downs it in one. The wine, port, whatever it is, is warming Lorne from the inside, helping him relax. "What've I got to do? Just tell Lizzie Borden back there that the kid must die? And which kid anyway? I feel a need to be specific here, girls."

"Oh, she'll know which one just fine, and so will you," Cordelia tells him, hefting herself to her feet. "Some things just aren't meant to be." She puts her hand to the small of her back, and the fingers tangle in the strings hanging from her dress.

"Well, there's a guillotine waiting, Alice." Lilah's lips twist as she also stands up. "I'd prefer it stayed that way." With a wince, she pulls out a spear that seems to have appeared in her side, blood floods down onto the gravel. "It's all about penetration in the end," she says, "Angel can't keep it in his damn pants. No man can."

Cordy nods. "And the womenfolk always have to clean up their mess."

"What does that make me?" Lorne asks, not sure if he really wants to know. He swallows another glass of fountain water and looks down again at the dark bloodied blade in his other hand.

"Balanced," says Lilah.

"Screwed," says Cordy.

And they laugh, turning to Lorne, and as one, they push him back into the pool.

The inky water closes over the top of his face, and he flails his arms. There seems no bottom to this fountain pool, and he just sinks and sinks, the water rushing past his ears in a roar. He grips the knife hard in his hand, not wanting to lose it, and he tries to keep calm. He knows what this is. He's returning to consciousness, returning to Drusilla and a job needing doing.

Boy, he so does not want to do it.

But as he sinks, he sees things -- Angel trapped in a sunken coffin, mad and starved; Wesley clutching his throat, standing in a puddle of bloodied white feathers; Cordelia, sleeping, laid like a sacrifice on an altar; a boy, the one he saw at the beginning of this looking glass trip, dragging a familiar jagged blade across his own flesh, ripping himself asunder.

All of them in pain, suffering horribly, and they grate Lorne's empathic sensitivities into shreds. They eat him up and spit him out, and he just wants it to stop, and...

Suddenly, he's held in soft perfumed arms, a cool hand wiping his brow. "There now. Stop struggling, I've got you. Everything will be all right now."

A woman holds him; no, a goddess. She has skin the colour of Kahlua and Baileys, and she's scented like a bouquet of exotic flowers. He melts into her presence, a smile of joy on his face. Gazing into her beautiful eyes, he knows that he's loved beyond all measure. The warmth of the sun fills him, and it's very hard to remember that he's a man on a mission.

He shakes some awareness back into his head. "You'd be the endless summer of love, I take it."

"Is that such a bad thing really, Krevlornswath?" Her voice is like drinking spiced honey in brandy. "Can you imagine a world with no pain? You hurt whenever they do, my sweet child. I know this; you don't need to tell me." She strokes his hair gently. "Won't you let me take your pain from you, Lorne? Won't you let me take it from all of them?"

"Well, when you put it like that..." He shakes his head again. "But the music. There'll be no music... all one note, they said..."

"Of course there will be music." She laughs, and he joins her. How can he not? "There will be non-stop music because every soul will rise in a joyous chorus of love and pleasure. How can you deny your world this?"

"I, uh..." It's getting harder and harder to think. What exactly _is_ so wrong about peace, love and understanding?

She offers him a large white flower -- a water lily. "Let me take the pain of this decision from you, child. It is not a fair burden to put upon a mortal. Such responsibility isn't meant for one so small."

He takes the flower and something drops from his hand as he does so, clanging to some unseen floor. Like almost everything else he's been given by women today, he raises the lily to his mouth. He pauses before he bites, however. Somewhere far away he can hear a child chanting, "Run, run, as fast as you can..."

"You promise there'll be singing?" he asks pathetically. He really doesn't want to disappoint the goddess.

"Always," she vows with her kind and ineffably wise smile. And smiling back at her, he bites.

A rain of tiny white flowers begins, quickly becoming heavier until it deluges him, and he giggles and laughs and jumps back into consciousness with a huge smile upon his face.

***

Lorne blinked at Drusilla who was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the chair where he was still tied, dipping her fingers in the wine within Sekhmet's faience goblet. Spots were dancing before his eyes, obscuring his sight.

"Are you all right, dearie?" Drusilla asked.

"Yes, doll," he reassured her. "I've just been staring at the sun." He gazed blearily around his bar and started planning the refurbishment.

"Greenie went to Greenland and came back with a joke. Tell me the joke, Greenie. What did the nightmare people tell you?"

He found his thoughts were hazy. He didn't remember very much, but one fact came through nice and strong. He wasn't sure how he knew it, but... "Everything's all right now, princess. I know somehow it's all gonna be all right."

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Autumn '03 Angel Book of Days challenge. Quoted lyrics are from 'The Party's Over' (from the musical, 'Bells Are Ringing') and 'A Step in the Right Direction' (from 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks'). Thanks to mpoetess and wesleysgirl for the beta.


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